Ask HN: What's your computer setup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's your computer setup?

49 pointslukeqsee175 comments

Personally I have a self-built AMD dual-core, 4gb ram, archlinux & gnome/openbox (looking into using awesome wm, any suggestions?), a 17" and a 19" monitor.

What do you hack on?

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I bought a little 12" Lenovo X60 off eBay to take with me on the road. It was the top of the line executive machine a few years back, and they're coming off lease and being refurbished now so you can get one for like $300. Add $100 for a big fast drive, 4GB memory and a new battery and suddenly it's a crazy fast dev machine that you can use on a chicken bus and not sweat too bad when it gets stolen by those Jamaican pickpockets from the American Express commercial (cause hey, it least it wasn't my $2k dev box).

The plan was to give it to the girlfriend now that we're home, but I'm finding it hard to go back to my big ol' Dell Latitude. It's tiny, it's fast, it logs me in by reading my fingerprint. She can't haves it. It's mine!!!

Before I list my setup, I'd like to ask: What's with all the laptops?

I worked off a 15-inch laptop for several years, but after using a desktop, I've completely converted. Laptops give you less screen space and less computational power, and in general I've never liked their keyboards. They're also more expensive (I think?) and trickier to self-build. The only advantage I see is portability, which is understandable, but I think it's more that they're becoming the new default computer type for everyone, rather than having people choose between them and desktops.

Anyway, mine:

I put together the desktop a couple months back: AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, and an SSD for the OS and programs. I decided to future-proof myself, after living off that laptop for too long. It's connected to two Acer monitors - one 24-inch, one 23.6-inch, leaving a difference that's enough to irritate me every time I try to align things perfectly. It runs Windows 7 for general use and a virtualised Arch Linux machine for development work. I've tried setting up Windows the way I like it, but when Linux is available I don't think it's worth the effort. The VM does nothing but run Emacs in seamless mode, so everything still works together, and I don't have to worry about window managers.

I type in dvorak on a Kinesis Advantage (the black one). I've never had recurring hand problems, but the keyboard setup feels so much nicer to use, I stick with it. That, and a Logitech mouse that I'm ambivalent about.

My phone is an HTC Dream (aka the G1), running Cyanogen 2.1. It's been outclassed several times by today's standard of phones, but I'm waiting until it fully breaks down before replacing it. Not sure what with yet, which is a shame, because I like the design, even if the hardware space bar is already starting to go.

All in all, I'm happy with what I have.

I have been using laptops ever since the Pentium 1 days (it was a 133Mhz Thinkpad 310 ED). I have had a few desktops as secondary computers, but having my computer with me has been a way of life for over a decade. That is changing some now that I have an iPad.

> What's with all the laptops?

I have a 15" Macbook Pro (version just before the aluminum ones)

I love being mobile. I'm never at a desk. I'm always at a table or couch somewhere. (I love coffee shops. I'm at one drinking an iced tea right now.)

One use case I never envisioned for my laptop was hooking it up to a friend's TV to watch videos. I can store an entire anime series on my laptop. (or loads of rifftrax[1]) When some friends and I want to watch some stuff I just bring my handy case of cables and hook up to their TV and fire up Front Row. (or MPlayer) OSX is pretty good at handling this, my desktop icons stay where I put them when unplug from the TV.

[1]: http://rifftrax.com

I have an extenral monitor, keyboard, and mouse with my laptop.

This:

http://photos1.blogger.com/photoInclude/x/blogger/5478/1688/...

and this:

http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/04/west-coast-mob...

Granted, they sell desktops in France, and you could technically put one in a van, but the experience of taking off for a month-long road trip to get some work done is a definite perk.

And this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/technomancy/3797798785/

And don't forget this:

http://twitpic.com/20sk9y

I love 3G.

Okay, you've just shown me how drab my working area is. Time to install some... trees.

If I went on a road trip, I'd take a laptop, yeah - but I couldn't take my main computer. To me, it's not worth the risk of losing all that kit when a low-powered netbook would probably do. Actually, the times when I need to be portable and the times when I need gobs of processing power are almost exclusive... That's just me, anyway.

It's a nice picture, but how can you see anything on the screen in that much sunlight?

Well it rules out a glossy screen, but as long as you've got one that's LED-powered it's fine. Course it's nicer in the shade, but it still works in the sun.

The problem with desktops (for me) is that I need a laptop to be mobile, I would love to have a mac pro or imac at home but keeping them both in sync is too much of an effort!

One factor I forgot when buying a PC: noise! The fans are horrible...

I agree: I actually wrote a post: http://jseliger.com/2008/12/26/computer-post-desktop-or-lapt... on this subject.

Worked on a desktop for years ... You're right, you can get monster cpu's, Ram, and Video cards to run 3 screen displays but what I hated was having to switch between the laptop and my desktop often (As a Rails freelancer, I work from a multitude of locations).

Often I'd get a file or install some software on my desktop and forget that I hadn't done so on my laptop, then I'd have to go find the file again or reinstall and setup the software.

It just got annoying after a while.

That's why I love Dropbox so much, makes it so easy to keep the important stuff in sync. I use it to have access to all my important stuff on my Desktop and Laptop (also why I tend to prefer portable apps nowadays, that I can just drop into the Dropbox folder to share with my laptop).

"What's with all the laptops?"

I've gone all laptop for a few reasons.

Ergonomics: For 6'4" me, quite a ways off most ergonomics charts (in theory not, in practice yes), the best position I've found at home is in a reclining chair with the computer on my lap. It isn't recommended anywhere that I can see, but with the position I hold my computer in, all the actual ergonomic factors that you are supposed to seek out are in play: I'm usually partially reclined so it's more like I'm in a chaise longue, which I've seen mentioned as one ergonomic optimum in a few places (and I agree). My wrists are very straight and unpressured. I don't use the trackpad a lot anyhow and it's in easy reach. I can go all day like this no problem. (Yes, I am aware that I shouldn't even so and in practice don't. My point is that I can.) Very few desktop setups have been able to match this.

Also, Dvorak on my laptop keyboards has proved sufficient for me. YMMV.

Display Space: My laptop is at 1600x900 (yes, exactly). I'm in Linux running compviz, and with a single keystroke I can switch virtual desktops arbitrarily quickly. (With compviz now it can be literally a single frame on the display if you like; I find I prefer a bit more animation so my poor primitive lizard brain, already struggling with this whole "computer screen" thing, doesn't get completely disoriented.) I still like my dual-monitor display at work but I can't say it's critical.

In Windows, I would scream. Even Windows 7 is still too multi-desktop hostile for this to work.

Computational power: Usually my compilation is actually offloaded to fast VMs anyhow, so that's less of a problem. You shouldn't buy the cheapest laptop you can get, but anything above about $600 should scream for most dev tasks, even modestly-disk-intensive loads, because everything comes with such obscene amounts of RAM nowadays that a lot of stuff is hitting cache anyhow. With a full desktop Linux and two VMs generously allocated with RAM, I'm just barely using all 4GBs, including disk cache. (Without it, I'm at 1.8GB free RAM. Obscene, I tell you.) Anything else and laptops are fine. Admittedly, you may have to run Linux.

And this laptop is now coming up on a year old now, and there's been advancements even then. Just about the only thing I do now that shows any sort of delay is starting up Firefox, and, well, I'm still waiting to see the system that doesn't take visible time to do that :)

The last desktop advantage for dev is IO and I expect SSDs to end that disparity. (Leaving behind only 3D graphics, but unless you're developing a 3D game that shouldn't matter for dev.)

Sheesh. Okay, here we go:

Hackerspace Kit

  ASUS 1000HA
    2gb RAM upgrade
    BT4 / Windows Dual Boot
  Arduino Diecimella

Freelance / Personal Kit

  MacBook Pro 2,2
    2gb RAM
    ATI Radeon x1600
    Boot Camp / VMWare Fusion XP Dual Boot

Gaming Kit

  Custom Built i7 Rig
    i7 920
    6gb RAM
    Nvidia GTX 260
    Dual 19" WS Monitors from Dell
  Dell Docking Station

Work Kit

  Dell D830
    Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz
    3.5gb RAM
    Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M
    Win XP
  Dual 19" 4:3 Dell Monitors
  Dell Docking Station

Try harder.

Not sure I understand what you're saying. It sounds snarky, but that doesn't fit the HN modus operandi, so I'm hoping I missed something. :)

I think maybe he is impressed.

A Macbook Pro. That is all.

A Macbook Pro 13". That is all.

This. + Magic Mouse and Lacie firewire speakers. May get the cinema display sometime soon.

Yes - Cinema display or other nice external monitor. Should boost productivity (although I'm not sure how much).

That's more than enough. I have a MacBook 13" in the office, and when I bring it home I plug it into a 26" Samsung display with mac keyboard and magic mouse, plus various external HDs.

I was really surprised by the weight of this machine. It's also very low-resolution. But the build quality is much-improved over precedessors. If Apple started to compete based on weight and resolution I might consider them, but who knows--maybe they're trying to avoid impinging on the lower-level ipad market.

2kg? Positively or negatively? My sister bought this dell (http://www1.la.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx...) and its 1.6kg. Everyone loves the weight.

The 13-inch Macbook Pro is just a lot heavier than it looks. It's much smaller than the 15-inch, but not much lighter.

I am on a macbook as well, with externals at my usual haunts.

It is really interesting to see how many people use a laptop as a main dev box. I figured that more hackers would have a desktop and a laptop

Same, with a 30'' Cinema Display.

I use awesome wm on archliux, and I HIGHLY recommend it. Definitely go for it.

You can pretty much do everything very efficiently from the keyboard, which just "feels right" to me (not to mention being way more convenient). You can also manage way more windows in an efficient way. The previous two sentences could probably be said about a lot of "tiling" window managers, honestly, but I think awesome is a great choice.

Any specific tweaks/hacks/configs I should look at? Otherwise I'll just dive in ... and hope for the best. =)

I'd say, just dive in.

Be sure to read man awesome.

You'll want to customize things a bit, most likely... rc.lua (the config file) is very hackable.

Time and again I find myself getting back to my Thinkpad X31. It's 2004 vintage, past its five-year extended warranty, and has an Intel processor from back when their top of the line was still branded as a Pentium. It's the size of a university notebook and weighs 1.6 kg. It's as good as I can expect from the form factor.

I have a Thinkpad T60p with a gorgeous UXGA IPS I'm looking to sell because it's too much computer. I have a Thinkpad R50p with a gorgeous UXGA IPS screen I'm going to use instead, but haven't gotten around to setting it up properly yet. I have a desktop with some low-end AMD dual-core, 4 GB of RAM, and a 23" Samsung 16:9 TN screen I've been trying to use as a VM and file server, but the process isn't quite done yet either. Yes, there is a pattern.

I have a couple of Nokia tablets (N800 and N810) I use when travelling. The N810 with Opera Mobile comes decently close to duplicating how I use my X31 (after obvious allowances for size difference), but it's been going through some software and perhaps hardware difficulties lately. Still, I was impressed — it got me through two weeks without an x86 machine pretty well.

I'm currently considering removing Windows 7 from the X31 (aided by its efforts to implode and steal my files) and replacing it with a basic Linux-based OS like easypeasy. 7 is pretty great when it isn't breaking, but it's almost too much OS for my use.

One of these days I'll build my laptop for the ages: a X61s loaded up with 4 or 8 GB of RAM, a nice SSD, and a 1400x1050 IPS screen swapped in. Not yet.

Okay, after reading through this thread, there seems to be an interesting trend. Almost everyone has beefy processors and lots of memory .... but it is all hooked up to a 19" monitor. Sure, there are people with the 27" iMacs and 30" monitors, but they sure seem a lot less than I would have guessed.

For those of you still using laptop screens, 19" monitors or even 22" monitors, have you tried something bigger? The difference in my productivity between a 30" or 2x24" monitors and the screen on my laptop is palatable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that given all the cloud computing these days, I'd take a slow system without much memory as my local box if I could get a bigger monitor for it.

I'm the other way, 24 and 22inch monitors with a relatively average machine these days.

Definitely one of my most productive upgrades has been more monitors, I run a 24" in portrait to my left, great for text editing and reading, centre I run a 24" in landscape, to the right I have a 20" attached to a different system and a 8 inch mimo under the center screen to throw media onto, the whole lot rigged to a powered sit/stand workstation :)

Downside is power consumption, upside is I don't have to use the light switch as it never goes dark in here...

Here's a bit from m$ on the benefits of multi-screen; http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/vibe.aspx

I remember reading somewhere else that the results of m$'s study into the productivity benefits of larger or more screens did not hit an upper limit.

I also design websites now and again and it's great to just drag a page around and preview it on different screen sizes in 'reality', mapping the 'visible' window on a larger monitor is not quite the same thing.

What do you hack on?

Today; our biggest distributed cluster (several thousand machines, 4 heads). Which is very fun :)

Usually I hack on various computers; either a water cooled Amd Opteron [the older ones that overclocked like stink] or Intel Core 2 Duo based machines. OS is usually Feodra core 11/Ubuntu (at work) or Mint (at home).

Synced with Dropbox, shared KB/Mouse using Synergy.

I think you officially win the thread....

   Asus Eee PC 1000HD
   * 1.6Ghz Atom
   * 1 GiB ram
   * 10" 1024x600 display
   * OpenBSD (recent snapshot)
   * StumpWM is the window manager
   * emacs is the editor

I use it as terminal to login to my ps3 running Debian sid for cell processor development. I use profont to let me fit a lot of code on the small screen.

I've heard some people say that only being able to see a small amount of code at a time forces good programming practices, compared to what you'd be able to do with a large monitor. Do you think that having such a small screen helps in this way?

I would say that's bullshit.

Tried using a netbook to do some web development, and the small screen, keyboard and lethargic hardware made it very frustrating. Horrible compared to using a big monitor and powerful desktop.

I bought an Asus Eee several years ago for writing away from home, but discovered too late that the keyboard is much too small for me to type comfortably.

Was it the 10" model? I found the keyboard on the 7" to be too small to touch type but the 10" is just large enough after some adjustment.

I got a Dell Mini 10v and turned it into a hackintosh for Rails development...unfortunately it's useless apart from browsing the web and reading PDFs. The small keyboard can be worked around by plugging in a proper Apple keyboard....but that's not very portable :-(

Well it certainly doesn't force anything. I could probably adopt some bad practices if I really tried.

The screen really isn't that small. I disable scroll-bars, tool bars and menu bars in emacs. Using 11pt profont I get two vertical buffers of 81 cols by 102 rows. That's quadruple the size of a vt100 terminal. How much more could you need? haha

If I had to use gnome this display size would be unusable but stumpwm makes it very usable.

I'm on an Asus EeePC 1000H and I adore it. I used to have another machine for gaming and other stuff but after I went about a year without turning it on I got rid of it. I like to plug mine into a larger external display and my wireless kb+mouse if I'm at my desk.

As far as my OS, yesterday it was a pretty heavily tweaked install of XP, today I'm trying out Ubuntu 10.04. Oh, and learning how to use Vim.

EDIT: I've also got a 1tb external drive for long term storage, and slightly smaller USB powered external for those other occasions.

Self-built computer: AMD 2.8 GHz quad-core, 4 gig ram, running Ubuntu 10.04 .

Keyboard: black Unicomp SpaceSaver (http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/en104bl.html).

Mouse: Microsoft SideWinder gaming mouse (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-HKA-00001-SideWinder-Gaming-...). 2x 21.5" emachines 1920x1080 monitor (http://emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=E211H_bmd).

The only important user-facing software on my machine: Emacs, Firefox, Pidgin, VLC. I installed Stumpwm (http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/), but went back to Gnome until I have the time to learn, and am less ego-depleted.

Well, the day job has a 13" aluminum macbook pro. Very nice, outfitted with everything ruby, blackbag, clojure, sbcl, external kenisis keyboard.

Home has another white 13" macbook used for time on the train with one of them there usb cellular thingies. Big development system is 8 gigs two core 400gig asus MB driving a samsung 204bw, running ubuntu next-to-latest, intel gig nic. Second montior driven by a 900mhz amd with 200gig drive, running ubuntu latest on another 204bw. The windows box is a 64bit gigabyte MB running 32 bit w2k with bunches of scsi drives and a scsi DAT tape drive.

In the basement are six $300 systems (asus mn2k or such) with dual or single core, 2 gigs (one with 4 gigs), dual intel gig nics, one inboard nic each, ubuntu latest or next to latest. And there is a cluster driven by a caos 2gig 3-nic box, with 7 diskless work nodes with 2 gig ram, 2 nics each. With something like $400, proximity to Tiger Direct, a monitor, keyboard and a mouse, you can build a very respectable development system the next day with one hour of assembly time.

Then there are the recycled bunch, two running openbsd for firewalls. These are two generations ago, castoff from friends who bought their kids new boxes. One bsd box that used to run the church website, a FIT pc running latest ubuntu that I thought might be useful (might be using it for day job if it weren't for VM Fusion--load it up with backtrack 4). Then there are two recycled "media" pcs, 32bits, one of which drives the TV, and the other that, well, i think it is running ntp, and maybe a website for some friends.

With all this, you would think I am a system administrator, but the closest to being an SA was when I wrote the first version of the Mark Williams Coherent Administrator's Guide. If Erin were to check my homework, I would certainly flunk.

What is fun at parties is to fire up the 40 inch TV with the media PC behind it and ask your dinner guests' address, and show them the bird's-eye-view of their house. Oh, and be cautious about pulling it up with zillow. That could get to be a not-so-positive experience at dinner time.

You can see my setup here: http://jseliger.com/2010/05/02/writing-space-2010 . You can see a 24" iMac (the screen space is, to my mind, more valuable than the processor speed) with an external monitor and a Kinesis Advantage). [EDIT: Note also the desk -- a Maxon 1000 series with a Humanscale keyboard tray. It's a good combination because you can adjust the tray to keep your arms at a 90 degree angle and the desk is really solid.)

My family's space is here: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/06/15/tools-of-the-trade%E2%80%... .

+1 for the Kinesis, great keyboard, fixed my wrist pain!

I'm a fan too; you can see from this review: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage/ that I was initially somewhat ambivalent... until I switched back to a normal keyboard, at which point I realized just how nice the Advantage is.

Primary: Thinkpad W500. Core2 Duo T9600 (2.8 GHz, 6M cache), 4GB memory, 15" 1680x1050, Ubuntu 10.04. I only have a couple complaints about this machine. The big one is that the screen can't compare to the 1600x1200 IPS panel of my old T60p. Yes, I did prefer the 4:3 aspect ratio. The audio ports being located on the front is also annoying.

Secondary: Mac Pro (borrowed). Two dual-core Xeon 5150s, 5GB memory, headless most of the time. I use this machine to do the heavy lifting for my text classification work. My experimental data set fits in memory on my laptop, but leaves uncomfortably little free space. It also makes my lap warm. The Mac being about 50% faster in practice than my laptop is a nice perk.

Desktop: Intel i7 980x 6 core cpu, 6GB ram, Nvidia 480gtx, Intel 160 GB SSD drive + 2x1TB HDD running Windows 7 64-bit with a 30" Monitor flanked by a pair of 20" Monitors in portrait mode (4960x1600 screen space).

This is my exact setup! (minus the 2x1TB HDD)

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5986/imag0011w.jpg

a fast-enough computer with ubuntu 10.04... that's all I need.

Yeah, I've got a cheap-ass Compaq laptop, that cost like $400 a year ago with Ubuntu 10.04 on it. 2 GB ram and a dual-core 64 bit AMD processor is plenty to get work done efficiently, especially with Vim + Bash as my primary work environment. I can run Windows XP in a virtualbox instance without issue for IE testing.

Since January I've been using an Apple iMac 27inch, 2.8GHz quad-core Intel core i7, 8GB ram, 1TB hard disk, Apple GB keyboard (not wireless) & Magic mouse running on Snow Leopard (Mac OSX 10.6).

Before January it was an original Intel iMac 24inch running Tiger (Mac OSX 10.4) which I'd been using for over 3 years: http://transfixedbutnotdead.com/2006/12/14/my-workspace-with...

1. Macbook Pro 13". I prefer it to the 15" I used to have, as the most important factor for me is portability. The 13" is effortless to tote, and fits comfortably into even small bags.

2. Core i7-860 based hackintosh, Samsung 24" monitor. It's essentially a cheap Mac Pro. It has all the power and screen real-estate I need to complement the laptop, especially for 3D work (Silo, Maya), and music production (Logic). I write music that is heavy on complex effects chains, and I like to keep it all realtime, so I definitely appreciate the extra power, which I wouldn't be able to afford in a real Mac desktop.

Speaking of music production, I use a Focusrite Saffire soundcard, for its nice-sounding mic preamps, and KRK Rokit 8 studio monitors, which sound pretty decent. I've got some M-Audio MIDI controllers which are of decent quality and not too pricey.

Also, a friend gave me his unused Apple Keyboard, which I use with my desktop. I know, it's a small crappy keyboard, but that's the best part, it is a much more dynamic element of my desk space than a big, bulky keyboard would be. Also, I like the fact the layout is identical to that of the Macbook keyboard.

Lenovo W500, 4GB, 15", Windows 7 x64. Laptop screen size doesn't matter as I have two 24" Samsung 2433BW LCD monitors mounted on an Ergotron Dual Side by Side LX adjustable arm kit. The second monitor is hooked up via Lenovo's USB DisplayLink adapter, which works quite well.

I can't recommend the Ergotron mounting kit enough. One of my LCDs is rotated to a vertical position for web browsing, documenting and coding.

ZaReason Strata Pro 13" w/Core 2 & SSD.

Just fast enough for my needs, a ULV processor so I can feel good about not sucking too much energy (the SSD makes up for the lack of CPU power, it still feels 'fast'), and Ubuntu FTW.

Eminently portable (3.5lbs), decent resolution on the screen and a nice keyboard (on par if not a little better than my old MacBook Pro's keyboard).

I love it as it has just enough of everything I need and not too much.

Thinkpad R51 with 1GB of RAM, 1.5GHz single-core processor and 40GB storage. It's running Windows XP.

An external WD disk and an external laptop mouse for when I am editing images.

I have the most spartan setup out among all the programmers that I know, but I have made wonderful things with it.

My fiancee jokes it's a piece of junk, but I tell her that we made $1020 for every dollar we spent on the laptop, used ;-)

At home, I have a Core i5 desktop with 4GB of RAM and dual 22" monitors running Windows 7, and also a 13" unibody MacBook which I bought back in October 2008 -- on the day they were released, actually.

In the past I used the desktop for quite a bit of gaming as well as remoting in to my work PC with Remote Desktop. These days I find I don't really game very much anymore, and I can connect to my work VPN/RDP through the Mac anyway if I need to work from home. Consequently, I'm on the MacBook almost 100% of the time. I'm actually considering getting a Mac Mini, moving the big HDDs out of the desktop into external enclosures attached to that, then getting rid of the Windows box and the older 22" display. I suppose I could also just get a NAS, but I like knowing I have a spare machine around in case my MacBook dies.

Work is a Q6600 with 3GB of RAM running Vista Business, since I'm currently working with mostly with .NET.

At work: slightly old Centrino Duo laptop with I think 2GB ram (due to be upgraded very soon), 1280x800 screen plus 2x 1280x1024 external screens. Runs XP SP2 (SP3 failed to install for some reason, maybe I'll try again in safe mode...).

At home: Athlon II x4 with 8GB ram (I usually seem to use around 4GB of that), SSD (one of the Indilinx Barefoot ones) plus large platter drive, 2x 2048x1180 screens. Runs Debian Testing/Unstable, plus occasional VirtualBox instances.

I also have an almost-netbook running XP SP3, which is too underpowered to do much local development on or watch high-res youtube movies but makes a nice web+ssh terminal for lighter tasks or travel. It's fairly small, and has about 7 hours of battery life (getting decent CPU power with similar size and life would have been way out of my budget, especially since that's what the desktop is for).

My main machine for the last 6 months has been a EeePC 1000HE netbook. I keep an Athlon 64 3200+ in the basement thaat has extra storage and a larger monitor for design work, but it rarely gets used anymore. My at work machine is a Pentium D with 2 23" screens in landscape.

I'm writing this on a current-gen MacBook Pro 13", which replaced a Samsung NC10 Hackintosh, which I absolutely loved and really wish Apple had made so that it would work properly.

Despite being almost the same spec-wise, apart from the much smaller screen, it's almost entirely replaced my 24" iMac pretty much solely because I can hack from the sofa which is a bit more social and also a lot more comfortable.

I recently replaced my colocated server with a Dell R210, which I think might be my new favourite rack server. It's so tiny and cute - and draws hardly any power. Sure, it's only a single-socket board with four DIMM slots, but that's just enough for me. And who would have expected TWO internal USB ports and an eSATA port? Nice little touches, there.

i7 920, Windows 7 64 bit 12G RAM nVidia 275 (Almost 2G of RAM) 22" Monitor ATM, as the wife is using the other one) 320G primary Drive, 1TB slave, 1.5 TB backup Plantronics Wireless Headphones 3 Printers. Yes, 3. 1 Canon Jet, 1 B/W laser w/fax/scanner, 1 laser color. Really, don't ask. Blame my wife for them.

The most difficult thing at the moment is the single monitor at only 22". Really looking to invest in a nice 27", but with so many other things needing doing, I really can't justify it at the moment.

It's a nice system. Before this, I was usually a generation behind. This was the "let's really splurge and go all out" system. =) Encouraged very much by the wife. And yes, I do end up using the system and it's resources quite heavily at times for video rendering while still using the computer.

It's a funny story how I got this system. See, my wife is a Mac Geek. And she's not some clueless Mac Geek. She was installing and running Debian back in the 90s. She knows her networking, hardware, and computers. Her Mac love came about when she went back to school for compute graphics. Anyways, she's a Mac Geek, so for several years now, our home has been a Mac v.s. PC environment. Good forbid something happens with my PC (or her Mac), as the other won't waste any time before coming up with some snarky comment. She's really good at this.

Anyways, when I saw the new iMacs, the 27" i7 version caught my eye. With the constant struggle of getting a Mac and PC to work together, I finally informed my wife that I would be getting a Mac, selling my PC, and moving to Apple.

She rejoiced.

We made plans, but with me starting a new job, and with wanting to wait until after the new year to give them time to fix any potential first-run defects, we planned to get one in January.

However, come December 25th,I learned she decided to buy me Windows 7 (which I had yet to pick up, mostly because I'd just been too lazy to do it). This resulted in me deciding that I should upgrade my computer, and that, as we say, is that. She had her chance.

Anyways, sorry for the long post, and the rambling. >_<

I've decided that the splurge method is the way to go. I spent almost $3000 on this machine 2 years ago, and it has yet to even flinch at any of the new games or software I throw at it. Much better than buying a new $1000 system every year that makes you want to buy something new only a few months in.

Work: custom-built dual quad core Xeon E5520@2.27GHz, 12 GB RAM, dual 22" dell monitors (Ubuntu Lucid)

Home:

* custom-built quad core AMD Phenom (Ubuntu Lucid), 8 GB ram, single 22" monitor

* Lenovo T400s (Ubuntu Lucid)

* Macbook Pro (rarely used, bought during period of irrational exuberance on potential app store sales)

Sorry if this is a bit OT, but does anyone have any experience using panasonic toughbooks? I travel fairly extensively and my MBP is basically in tatters (I have enjoyed it immensely, but the hardware has been subpar - battery exploded, screen went dead, power plug nearly caught on fire, HD failure, etc. I've noticed the new ultralight toughbook is out, and thought this loaded with Linux might be an ideal solution. I have no problem paying premiums for tools that work (my assumption with the MBP) but also obviously don't want to buy something that doesn't return the appropriate value. Anyone with any experience with these tools?

I have used a few different toughbooks, and have been pleased with all of them.

I am a big fan of the Panasonic business series. They were originally called "Lets Note" in japan but rebranded with "toughbook" in the US as the business ultralight series.

I have a Y4 currently. It is somewhat rugged, but the most important part is that it has every attribute I want: 3.5 lbs, 14" screen at 1400x1050, built-in DVD/RW, 5-7 hour battery life. The keyboard is quite nice also. Basically, I had a Macbook Air with more features in 2006.

http://rdist.root.org/2008/02/07/panasonic-cf-y4-laptop-disa...

If you want to replace the hard drive, you have to disassemble the whole thing. RAM upgrades don't require that though. I'm quite familiar with the BIOS and it's one of the better ones. It works fine with Linux and FreeBSD.

They stopped making the Y series with the Y7. The replacement (F8 and F9) annoys me a little because they went to widescreen. I hate widescreen. What you want as a programmer is as many vertical rows as possible, not horizontal. The F9 is 1440x900. You gain 40 horizontal pixels but lost 150 vertical! It also has that weird handle thing but you can ignore it.

I'm still happy enough with my Y4 that I haven't replaced it. It's such a good combination of build quality and firmware quality that I'm afraid of anything else.

I know a New York Times photographer that had an unhealthy love of hers. It was so old to be laughable...but it kept going and going.

It's cool to have a computer so tough you don't use a case. (and years later to be debating replacing it because new machines are faster, not because it's broken.)

A Macbook Air (Gen 2) with the SSD. Sometimes connected to a screen + bluetooth magic mouse & keyboard. I sold my more powerful 15" MacBook Pro because it was too heavy. The Air is powerful enough for what the java dev and iphone + web app tinkering that I do. I really love the freedom afforded by the light weight. It makes it much easier to program and procrastinate away from the desk (in bed, armchair ...). I just wish it didn't overheat so easily, especially in bed, but flashblock and click2flash help a lot.

I am trying to use a fixed height stand up desk, but I don't feel I have the correct height yet.

This is an interesting question after reading your box. I started off with my computer infatuation with a setup very much like yours. But lately, I am so much more interested in portability that I have gotten rid of everything except for a HP dv4 (ADM dual-core, 4GB RAM) that I run Ubuntu on th ssh into my webfaction hosting account and writing my thesis in latex.

The size can't be beat, and it does everything I need it to without being the size of a house (granted I don't game on it...) Maybe if I had more space than a 600sqft apt, I would still have a mini-supercomputer, but laptops are amazing lately.

Laptop : MacBook 13" Unibody (late 2009) 2Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB Seagate "Hybrid" (4GB NAND).

Desktop #1 : Win7-64 - 23" LCD 2048x1152 Core i5-750(Quad 2.5Ghz), 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5770 1GB, 1TB Seagate System drive, 1.5TB Seagate Storage

Desktop #2 : MacOS 10.6.4 (Hackintosh) - 23" LCD 2048x1152 Intel Q6600(Quad 2.4Ghz) 8GB RAM, Nvidia 8800GT 512MB, 1TB System Drive, 1.5TB Storage

Fileserver : Windows Home Server 1.4Ghz AMD Geode 1GB RAM 160gb System drive 8TB of total storage space.

My two desktops have my 23" LCD's side by side and I control both with one keyboard/mouse (Win7-64 machine is the server) via Synergy+ with an SSH tunnel.

I'm really happy with this setup.

I basically buy everything Apple releases. So I've got an 8 core Mac Pro loaded to the hilt and.. it's sat in my shed unused for the past 9 months! Once the new 27" iMac came out, that was it. Perfect form factor, "fast enough", a far better screen than my 30" ACD.. so it turns out a machine half the price of my Mac Pro set up totally replaced it. And as there's no market for used Mac Pros, it seems, I now have a full Mac Pro + 30" setup sitting around entirely unused (and a 17" MBP - once I realized I don't really like or need a notebook).

I came to same conclusion because originally budgeted for a Mac Pro + 30inch screen but instead went for the iMac 27inch (and used money saved on extra external HD's, Drobo & software and still walked away with large pocketful of money!).

If you're looking for a home for it, feel free to shoot me an email.

You could always just plug it in and use it for folding@home or something.

Also, the 27" iMac works as an input diplay, and it will also take that second monitor nicely (if you can deal with tons of space)

Surely somebody would give you a good price for it! How much are you asking?

I like to find successful eBay auctions to gauge value but they're highly variable since it's not commonly sold kit and I've upgraded it to 8GB of memory, more hard drives, and what not.

For an 8 core 2.8GHz Mac Pro with 8GB memory, I've seen everything from £1500ish to £2200 (which is more than it cost new!! - I suspect it's because the older 8 core Xeons are faster than the current 4 core ones that replaced them). Given that, I'd take £1500 for it.

On the 30" ACD front, it's as-new, little used over the last year, no dead pixels, the same as the current £1199 one basically. I think I'd take £700 for it just because it's taking up a lot of space.

On the 17" MBP, I haven't done my research yet - it's a stock 17" 2.66GHz unibody MBP with 4GB RAM, no dead pixels, heathly battery. Cost £1799 new, I think. No good auctions to watch on eBay it seems, someone has the same machine for £1439 BIN. If I had to stab in the dark, though, it's probably worth £1300.

I recommend finding your local Mac USer Group and see if anyone there's looking for one.

There's a few machines been bought/sold via the Edinburgh MUG.

£3,000: one year of car insurance OR an 8 core Mac Pro, 30" ACD, and an iPad. Hmmm…

One year of car insurance? Christ. I thought £700 was bad enough (and I'm almost 30).

The joys of being a new driver. :)

(and in fact, it's only £3k if I pay it in a lump sum, it's nearer to £3.5k if I want to pay monthly!)

You're in England, yeah? Surely there's some music types around who would buy a used Mac Pro... here in Perth, Australia, I know a few Drum & Bass and Dubstep producers who are gagging for one, they're just more expensive here.

The problem, it seems, is that if you have the budget for a Mac Pro, you're the sort of person who'd just buy a new one.

The odd thing, though, is that the 8 core Mac Pro I have has held its value well in the sales I've seen because it's still faster than the current 4 core, yet was considered the entry level one at the time..

  Quad core Q5550 , 8GB ram, Vista x64
  cygwin with extensive use of mintty
  Eclipse for everything
  2 * 24" Monitors
  Microsoft X6 Keyboard
  Taskflash LED readout [I make this ;) ]
  Velociraptor 300GB + ~3TB of sundry disk space
  LTO-2 tape drive (unf, requires SCSCI card too)
  VMWare used extensively for linux dev
  Linode for internet accessible hosts
  Virgin Media 50Mbit cable internet

  --

  Also a Thinkpad W500 with an Intel X-25M for when my baby comes along in October and I'm kicked out of my home office

Custom-built: * Intel Core2 E8600 @3.33Ghz * 1 GB ram (so behind I know) * Vista but soon to be Win7 (tried linux but it was disappointing) * Two 22inch Samsung monitors @ 1650x1080 * Crazy video card that is louder than the rest of my computer (when the fan starts up)

It's almost 2 years old now, but still fast enough to run all the latest games on max settings without flinching. I don't play as many games though lately.

I've also got some crappy gateway laptop with a buggy touchpad driver that I only use when my desktop is on the fritz.

Refurb HP 2.6 GHz machine with XP that I got cheap from TigerDirect a couple years ago. There's also a server on the network running FC5, but I don't remember its particulars.

Hanging off the HP are a single 19" monitor, original IBM 5150 keyboard, B&W laser printer, Atmel AVR In Circuit Emulator, AVR ISP programmer, serial cable for whatever hardware I need to talk to at the moment and a Bluetooth Class 2 dongle for my Bluetooth-enabled hardware projects.

I keep meaning to build a USB-controlled desk lamp, but never have the time...

I use a Dell Latitude D630 as my primary/only machine. It has a dual-core 2.4GHz Intel, with 4GB of memory. Serves my needs well - which include a lot of Chrome tabs open (around 30), development in Eclipse with some decent size projects. I also develop using vim/gcc, but that's generally lighter-weight relative to Eclipse.

I like having only one system to do all my work. I don't have to sync across multiple machines. I do take backups every week and use external keyboard/monitor to round it off ergonomically.

I have a Toshiba Satellite (Dual-Core 1.6 GHz) with Ubuntu 10.04 extended on an external monitor (19") and an old Compaq desktop (Dual-Core 2.0 GHz) with Windows XP on a 26" monitor.

Main: 13" MacBook, with snow leopard, and VM's for Ubuntu and Windows. This gets hooked up to externals wherever I am (Office, home, coworking). This gets paired with a Magic Mouse (best groomsman gift ever), and it has been a solid laptop since I got it.

At home, I also have my girlfriends old Dell E1505 laptop that I am converting to a torrent and media center, which will live under the flatscreen.

Not noticing too many people using a laptop stand. I have a cheap one from Ikea, which really works well.

http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2010/03/28/the_setup/

i think it would be neat if _the setup_ (http://usesthis.com/) had a version where anyone could submit their responses and people could vote them up. a lot of the people they "interview" are really uninteresting and i'm sure there's a lot more unique setups out there being used by people that aren't famous.

usesthat.com! lets do it

> i think it would be neat if _the setup_ (http://usesthis.com/) had a version where anyone could submit their responses

The nice thing about the Web is that it's distributed:

http://technomancy.us/137

Spoiler: Thinkpad X200s, standing desk, vertical-orientation external display, custom keyboard setup attached to my pants.

i created a setups subreddit to post them to, but for some reason it got banned. i'm trying to get a reddit moderator to help.

http://reddit.com/r/setups/

it's been unbanned, post away.

HP Z800 with 2 x X5560 Quad core CPU, 24GB ECC RAM coupled with an NEC 2690WUXi2 26" monitor.

That's for home hacking.

The work one is a Mac Pro with similar spec.

The home system is dual-booted to Windows Server 2008 and Ubuntu. I do this so that I have a work mode and a play mode... play being Ubuntu. Firing up Windows means I only do SharePoint work and since rebooting isn't instant I keep working. I realise I could just install Ubuntu in a Hyper-V but I purposefully don't do that so that I get things done.

17-inch MacBook Pro with RAID 0 Intel SSDs: http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-apple-macbook-pro-raid-0-arr...

and a small Asus EEE PC (1005HA) with Ubuntu 10.04 for commuting/etc, usually tethered to my Nexus One with froyo.

http://paul.posterous.com/reading-and-taking-notes-on-abooka...

Primary non-development machine (gaming/entertainment): i7 920 @ 2.8ghz, 6gb ddr3 1600, XFX Radeon HD 5770, Win7 Pro

Laptop (most of my dev and schoolwork is done on this): Thinkpad SL500 (2.0ghz Core2duo, 2gb ram) Dualboot ArchLinux (main/default) w/ Awesome/Xmonad and Win7 (for visual studio and dj software).

Netbook (eeepc 900A): ArchLinux, mostly used for IRC/web when on the run.

Much of my web and non-gui programming is done via ssh to my server in vim, so OS doesnt really matter to me.

27" i7 iMac with 8GB RAM, attached to a 30" Dell display (3007WFP). I switched about a month ago from a MacBook Pro (attached to the same Dell display), and it's phenomenal. It's the first setup I've ever had that actually feels fast enough to run everything I need (iTunes, Word, Excel, and Windows running in VirtualBox, along with a few instances each of iTerm, Chrome and Textmate) without skipping a beat.

Corei7 930, 12G Ram, RAID mirror 2x 140GB 15K rpm drives + 1TB storage, NVidia GTS 250 (Bought pre-fermi will update to a tesla soon), 24" Synchmaster

What would you buy today, a Macbook Pro 13" or 15" ? I ask because the processor is very different (Core 2 Duo vs I5/7)...

Also, can a 13" drive an 30" cinema display?

I don't hack nearly as much as I would like to so that wasn't the deciding factor in choosing a box to work on, this machine is as big as it is mostly because of my browsing habits.

Hundreds of tabs open is not rare at all when I dig in to a subject and I've seen the browser top 10G resident. Amazing how much memory it will eat up.

And when I do program (especially if it is in java) the IDE will use what the browser doesn't.

Work: Dell Optiplex 960 x3 on a KVM. Room(Afghanistan): Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh / Asus EEE Box PC running Win 7 / Ubunutu 10.04 Home: iMac 20" from a couple of years ago / PowerBook G4 12"

The worst of them all is the freakin Dell Optiplex's at work, but what can I do? I love the portability of the Hackintosh and am thinking of installing Ubuntu on it as well, but I do love my Mac OS X.

My main is an old desktop, amd athlon xp 2400, nvidia nforce2 motherboard, and nvidia fx 7600 graphics card, dual 17in monitors, running win7. 5 years old, still does everything i need like a champ. My laptop is a 6year old off brand celeron 1.7ghz processor, running debian stable. Still works fine, albeit a little big. I will upgrade when things break.

At work, dual 27" iMacs (one with the Core i7 option + 16GB of RAM, and the other a base 27" model in Target Display Mode) as my workstation, and several XServes and custom Fedora boxes in 3 racks.

At home, a first-generation 15" unibody MacBook Pro (2.2ghz C2D, 4GB RAM) hooked to the 24" LED Cinema Display. I also use a last-generation Mac Mini (pre-unibody) as an HTPC.

A Macbook (black) with a triple-monitor display (internal display + 2 x 24" Acer 1080p monitors on either side).

I'm using the EVGA UV Plus+16, which is a USB-to-DVI adapter for the second external monitor, which is really nice, but it only allows the one monitor to go up to 1680x1050, so I just use that monitor for email, IM, IRC, etc, where it doesn't really matter.

Are you happy with the EVGA adapter? I have been looking for a solution to do exactly what you are doing.

Yes, it works exactly as advertised, and my humble little macbook doesn't seem to have any problems processing with it.

The text is a little fuzzy, though, because the UV16 only goes up to 1680x1050 in widescreen format, while my monitor is 1080p. But apparently EVGA recently came out with the UV19 which says it supports 1920x1200, and Buy.com has it cheaper than I paid for the UV16, so I'm strongly considering upgrading.

Thanks a ton. Do you find that two externals really help?

That seems like a loaded question ;-) It helps tremendously for me, but everyone is different.

Trusty little white MacBook 2.1GHz/4GB running Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Lucid. I have an external full sized Apple keyboard, mighty mouse and Raindesign MStand, and I swapped out the 120GB drive for a faster 500GB one - and that's it. I'm looking for a good 1920x1200 screen, that's the most my MB will take, but there's no hurry.

15" MBP(2.8GHz core 2, 8GB ram, 500GB 7200RPM seagate) w/ 30" Dell Ultrasharp.

Magicmouse with magicprefs to allow for the middle mouse click.

USB adapter to PS/2 Natural Keyboard.

Sizeup and cinch for keyboard window management. (makes me feel like a robot, but in a good way.)

xGestures for mouse gesture support. I cannot live without this utility.

This is by far the best setup I have ever worked on.

I have 3 MacBooks (Pro, Air and unibody white), and use as a primary machine the one that works (i.e. not in repair) -- currently, MacBook Air. I had to underclock it with CoolBook to 800 MHz so that it could work without overheating. I can't believe I spent more than $7500 for something like this.

Until last week's unfortunate beer spilling incident, I was using a macbook, along with a long standing server instance running Gentoo on RackSpace, with further instances spun up and then disposed of as needed.

I have to say I find it kind of amusing how many people on HackerNews use Apple gear.

Using the Gentoo instance like a VM?

Nope, just SSH into it, treating it as if it where a plain old hosted box.

I see i see. I love having boxes to do that with. Never tried Gentoo-whats the draw to that?

I used Gentoo four/five years ago, and the draw was the amount of optimisation available. Everything's compiled from source with optimisation flags for your specific hardware rather than the generic 'works pretty much everywhere' options that are used for pre-built binaries with most distros.

The down-side is that it was - at that time, at least - a huge nightmare to maintain and do major upgrades. Almost as bad as CentOS. Waiting for things to compile every time you install something also got boring pretty quickly. I moved to Ubuntu, and I'm now considering moving to just Debian for future VMs I build.

Dell Latitude with Ubuntu. Fairly high res display (1920x1200) is the only real distinguishing feature, other than that, it's a pretty average machine. I don't think you need anything that fancy for most programming work these days. More memory is always good, of course.

Quad core 2.8Ghz, 8GB RAM, 2TB internal, further 2.5TB in rats nest of external disks. 2 x 19" monitors. Running W7 and Snow Leopard via VM for iDev,

Plus a crappy old laptop I had to upgrade to 1.5GB RAM after it came with 512MB and Vista. Used only in cases of extreme laziness.

Noisy HP laptop, Core 2 Duo T5550, 3 GB RAM, dual Win 7/Ubuntu.

Speaking of computer setups, if anyone is interested in helping my friend obtain one (her old laptop broke), you can read more at http://www.philipfund.com

An old laptop (not working at the moment) and an old desktop both running Ubuntu 10.04. When I say old, I mean 3+ years old. Planning to buy a new one some time soon, probably with the low-med spec range. Don't need much really.

Also nice to see this many Ubuntu users.

Office hardware: Dual Nehalem Xeon 2.4Ghz with 12GB RAM and two RAID'ed Cheetah SAS drives, all in Supermicro chassis. make -j 16 all the way!

Travel hardware: ThinkPad T61

Software on both: 64-bit Debian unstable with xorg/sawfish wm (no Gnome or KDE), emacs, screen, g++, make, etc.

Work: Dell Precision M6400 - Core 2 Duo T9900, 8g RAM, 250g SSD, 1920x1200 17", Win7 64bit Dell 20" LCD Lab full of systems: VMWare ESX, Solaris, Linux, AIX, and more

Personal: Asus 1201N - Atom 330 (1.6GHz dual-core), 2g RAM, ION + HDMI, 1366x768 12.1", Win7 32bit

Personal:

Stock Dell Mini 9 (originally planned to go Hackintosh route, but never got around to it. UNR 9.04, use VIm for most everything)

Older freecycled Dell Inspiron desktop (~2.0 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM, Ubuntu)

Work:

Lenovo Thinkpad (Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, WinXP)

2x Dell Optiplex desktops (ditto, one has a 17" display, other is dual 17s)

13" MacBook (first unibody model) driving a 24" Dell U2410. Microsoft Natural 4000 Ergonomic Keyboard. I just started trying to go mostly mouseless using Optimal Layout and vimperator, which together cover about 85% of what I ever need one for.

My only machine is an 11.6" Acer Aspire AS1410. It's a great machine, especially for it's very low price. Plus an external 27" display and a few 2.5" hard disks that's all I need.

My DE is Gnome, at home and at work. I live mostly in Emacs & chromium anyway.

I have a 15" Dell Inspiron 6400, given by my school for free 3 years ago. 1.6 GHz Centrino Duo 2gb ram ubuntu 10.04 gnome+xmonad as window manager internal hard disk space is absurdly low(80gb, I think), I have a 500gb external drive, though.

free with paid admission, that is ;)

15' Macbook Pro with 27' Dell monitor for work. Would love to stick 4 additional gigs of RAM and SSD into macbook :)

Previous Mac Mini with Time Capsule, Creative EMU USB soundcard and 37' samsung full hd display for home and media content.

PS3 for gaming, Kindle for reading.

ZaReason UltraLap SR (c. 2008)

  2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo
  4GB RAM
  250GB hard disk
  iwl4965 802.11n wifi
  Intel 965 graphics (yay open drivers!)
  13" 1280x800 screen
  best laptop keyboard there is (clicky! like a Model M! *heaven*)

MacBook Pro 15" with i7 processor and 8GB RAM, 24" Apple Cinema Display at a standing desk, Logitech Nano mouse, Rode Podcaster USB condenser mic, Wacom Intuos 3 tablet, and Canon Vixia HV40 straight into Quicktime via firewire for video.

Self-built desktop with a Q9550 CPU and 4GB RAM running Kubuntu. Dual 23" LCD montitors. I can dual-boot into Windows XP when I get gaming or flight-sim urges.

I also have a Dell E1505 laptop (also running Kubuntu) that I use when I need to be mobile.

2.66GHz i7 15" Macbook Pro, 4Gb RAM, 24" monitors at home and work. Mac keyboards, MS mice, a few TB of external HDs, wireless headphones.

Used to be into self-built machines, but prefer stuff with a combined warranty that 'just works' nowadays.

Another MS mouse mac user! I absolutely love MS mice and have two identical models at home and work. Their OS and office software may suck but the mice are awesome.

For god's sake man, upgrade those monitors!

You don't actually do development on 17" screen do you?

whoops... meant 17" and 19".

Home couch-hacking: Dell XPS M1530, T8300 (2*2.4 GHz), 4 GB ram, 15" 1920p screen, 7200 rpm disk, Vista 32-bit (so yea, only 3,5 GB ram..).

Work: HP with about the same specs but with external keyboard and 24" monitor and slower disk.

I'm surprised there are only two references to BSD so far.

NetBSD -current on ThinkPad T410, dwm, Xemacs, xterm

I probably could suffer to build a desktop for farming-out builds to, etc., but I haven't. Always want portability, though :)

Fast enough quad-core proc, 8 gb ram, 24" monitor, xmonad on ubuntu.

Will probably end up with another monitor here soon, just haven't decided if I should get another 24 or something smaller that I can run vertically.

Work: Dual-Core Power Mac, 5GB RAM, Snow Leopard, 24" Dell Monitor

Home: 13in Macbook Pro, 4GB RAM, Snow Leopard, 24" Dell Monitor.

Before I bought the Macbook it was a 15" Ubuntu/Win7 Gateway Laptop with 3GB RAM.

a 13.3" Aluminium MacBook with Snow Leopard, 4GB ram, 24" Philips TFT, Magic Mouse and a Logitech DiNovo keyboard in combination with a Webfaction account and a Linode VPS.

Home: (Coming today) AMD 2.8 GHz 6 core, 4GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04. 23" and 15" monitors

Mobile: Asus EeePC 900 with EasyPeasy

Work: some Intel quad core, 4GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04, 21" monitor

On the way: AMD 48 core machine

Desktop: Core 2 Quad + 8GB RAM with 22" and 24" monitors IBM Model M keyborad + Sun Type 7 mouse (previously I had Type 7 keyboard)

Laptop: ThinkPad T60 with Core Duo and 2.5GB RAM

A 7 year old (do I win?) IBM R31. 384MB RAM, ~1GHz single core. Debian + XP (for gaming only). I'm planning to switch to xmonad once I finish learning Haskell.

13.3" MacBook Pro (2010) and a 23" external display (1080p)

Amusingly enough, I too have a self-built AMD dual-core but with 8GB ram, Debian stable lenny (using the stock gnome) and a 24" WUXGA (1920×1200) monitor.

17" MBP (8GB RAM, 256 Corsair SSD) running OS X 1.6, laptop stand, 30" Apple display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, Phillips color LED for bias lighting.

13" MacBook Pro + iPad + Bose speakers + iomega backup drive. I will eventually buy a new monitor or two and use a keyboard and mouse at the office.

For ASP/Windows Dev: An AMD quad core cobbled together from spare parts. Cost about $300 and works like a charm.

For iPhone and Android programming: MBP 13.3"

Three things actually:

2.33 GHz Dual Core Dell with 2gb RAM and Win 7

1.6 Core 2 Duo Systemax laptop (15.4 widescreen) with 4GB ram and Win 7/Zenwalk Linux

Dell Mini9 with 2GB and Zenwalk Linux

HP Pavilion dv6000 running Windows Vista (gaming) and Ubuntu 10.04

Would love to get more boxes to play around with, but as a broke student, VMs help.

Desktop: Quad Core 2.5Ghz, 8GB ram, 6TB raid-5, arch linux running xmonad.

"Old" laptop: Macbook Pro, 4GB ram

"New" laptop: Asus EeePc 1201N running arch linux.

13.3 MacBook Pro, 4GB ram with Snow Leopard

e8400, 4GB Ram, 9800GT, Windows 7 x64, 22" Dell 2209WA, happy hacking keyboard <3, razer diamondback

But I'm hoping to be able to replace that machine in the near future with a `smarttop', preferably something like the marvell ebox or similar spec-wise (hopefully cortex a9)

My wm of choice has always been 'pekwm'

Hardware:

- Core i7 920

- 6gb DDR3 RAM

- ATi 5970 for graphics - currently RMA'd

- 19" HP Display awaiting upgrade.

Software:

- Ubuntu for working (GNOME)

- Arch for hacking (GNOME)

- Windows 7 for games

Portable:

- Dell Mini 10v base model with Ubuntu

- College issue Core 2 laptop with Arch

i7-920 (overclocked to 3.8Ghz), 12GB RAM, 160 GB Intel SSD boot + 2TB Hitachi for storage, 2 x 24" Samsung monitors, Windows 7 Ultimate 64. 4TB HP windows home server for storage and backup. Dell XPS M1330 laptop for the road. (Time for an upgrade)

i7 15" (HR) MacBook Pro with SSD. Most expensive, albeit best, thing I've ever bought.

Seriously, no one has a Commodore? I figured there had to be at least one....

Homebrew i7/24" LCD running Ubuntu 10.04

Dell XPS1530 Running Ubuntu 10.04

Intel Core i7 930, Archlinux + openbox, 13" Macbook

my setup http://www.flickr.com/photos/ioctl/4566368145/

Dual-core Acer notebook, Gentoo, stumpwm, Emacs.

Mine is SOTEC laptop I bought at Nakano, Tokyo.

HP mini note 2133

15" Macbook Pro i5 and 24" iMac Core 2 Duo

A dell vostro 13 with Ubuntu 10

2 notebooks, 2 desktop pc

15" Macbook Pro

13.3" MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.6. I gave up stationary computers almost 6 years ago, and haven't looked back once.

HP AMD 64 dual core 4gm ram 400 gig hd 19" LCD Logitech Mouse and Keyboard

OS; Ubuntu 10.04

My next workstation, I am building myself.

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